


Feel the Night

by mickeym



Category: Popslash
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Outdoor Sex, Past Relationship(s), Public Sex, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-04-23
Updated: 2003-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-09 02:07:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/81815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mickeym/pseuds/mickeym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A dark beach, a misunderstood dream and an apology.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feel the Night

It's quiet, down here on the beach. Behind you, distant and muted, you can still hear the sounds of the after-party, the party you and Lance both ducked out of at the same time, if separately, sheepish grins taking the place of awkwardness – at first.

You walk together, ignoring the bodyguards trailing a discreet distance behind you. The sun's long since gone down, though you can still see lighter streaks against the dark night sky, daylight fighting the good fight, if in vain. Starlight bleeds pale white into the black, and if you look long enough, you imagine you can see endlessly, that the sky reflects into the sea, and back into the sky. You're on a tiny piece of solid ground, surrounded by velvet and diamonds, swirling around you.

The sand is cool against your feet; the water laps up on the shore in slick, shivery trickles, surrounding your feet before sliding backward, waves locked in an endless loop of crawl up, crawl back.

"You got sunburned," you say finally, the easy quiet giving way to awkward, ringing silence. You lift a hand to touch the red you saw earlier beneath Lance's eyes, a bright flush of color from playing too long out in the sun and the water, then remember at the last minute you don't have the right to touch him any more.

You remember when there was nothing but easy between the two of you, when you touched as much as you wanted – as much as he wanted – playing around and goofing off, and it never looked like anything but friends, and was actually that plus so much more.

Now it's barely friends.

"Forgot to reapply the sunscreen." His voice sounds like the surf against the rocks, rough and rumbly, and it makes goosebumps rise along your arms. He squinches his face and you wonder if it hurts. You remember another time, another beach, another sunburn. Remember applying aloe gel to the burn, then using it to ease another, far more pleasant burn.

"Does it hurt?" You're talking about his sunburn. Of course you are.

"A little bit." So's he. Because nothing else hurts, right?

Silence again, and you hate that this happened. How you went from friends, to lovers, to strangers.

It makes your skin crawl to think you and he are strangers again; the sort of strangers that are intimate with each other's thoughts, feelings, bodies – but who can't talk, can't look at each other.

He was warm against you, earlier, during the concert, when you touched his back, put your arm around his shoulder. You miss touching him so bad it's like a physical ache, some days.

"JC's crushing hard, isn't he." It was really kind of cute, actually, or it would be, if Tim weren't completely, utterly in love with his wife. Hell, as far as you could tell, everyone who'd spent any time at all around Faith over the last three days, was in love with her, to some degree or another.

"Yeah. He'll get over it." You feel, more than see, Lance's shrug. Of course he will. He's probably over it _now_, because JC's celebrity crushes rarely last more than the time it takes to rev up into the performance. You're not entirely sure, but you wonder sometimes if JC's asexual. It would certainly explain Bobbie.

"Lance—"

"Chris." He stops and turns, and you stop just before you walk into him, toes bumping against the sandals he's wearing. Lance doesn't like cold, damp sand; says it feels funny on his toes. Abrasive. "No."

"You don't know what I was gonna say." You tug on one earring, needing the sharp, quick sting when the wire cuts slightly into tender tissue. Behind you, Dre and Mike stopped, too, but you can feel them, know they're there. Listening. Watching. Never alone. You turn and shake your head at them. "We're fine, guys. Go on."

"Chris—" Dre's voice is a deep rumble, as low as Lance's. You shake your head again.

"Go on, dude. No one else is out here. We're fine. Big boys, y'know?"

Mike snorts, and Dre makes a sound almost like a snort. "It's our asses if anything happens to you."

"If we get kidnapped or killed, we'll be sure to let Johnny know that we told y'all to get lost." Snarky, sexy Lance. You would kiss him, if you didn't think he'd belt you across the jaw.

It takes them both another full minute to grudgingly give in – grudgingly, because you _know_ the look Mike's giving you, even if he thinks you can't see, for the darkness.

"I feel like I just ditched the chaperones at a school dance," you say quietly, watching the two men lumber away slowly.

"That's pretty much what you did, except, y'know, for the part where you _told_ them to get lost." Lance steps into the water, lets the waves wash over his feet. The moon breaks behind a cloud, and you see him shiver and wonder why. It's not cold out, and the water isn't cold, by any stretch.

"They were lying in wait for us when we snuck out, dude. I planned to sneak away totally by myself."

"Sorry I fouled that up." He's still staring out at the nothingness, and you think again about the swirl of black all around you, pinpricked by dots of white. It'd be easy to lose yourself in this.

"I'm not." There. You said it. Said what you've been thinking for the past—Jesus, six months. "I wanted to talk to you."

"We've been talking." You make a frustrated noise low in your throat, and Lance turns to you with a snort. "You did _not_ just growl at me."

"Maybe." You kick at a pebble, hear the _plop_ when it hits the water. "What if I did?"

"You gonna take a swing at me, too?" There's amusement warring with pissy-ness in Lance's voice, and you imagine you can see his eyes, all cool green, calm and unruffled – except not. Because you can piss him off easier than anyone else under the sun. You can piss him off, and make him laugh, and smile, and cry. You can bring him pleasure, and you can hurt him.

You did hurt him.

"I'm sorry, y'know." You wonder if you ever said it to him. You thought it, a lot. You talked it out with JC, trying to work logistics out in your head. You talked it out with Joey, trying to see all angles, all sides. You don't even remember now what exactly you said, just that it hurt him—badly. Bad enough to divide something you thought was indivisible.

"You seemed pretty serious about it at the time." He steps back from the water and sits down, still not looking at you. The moonlight makes his hair gleam otherworldly, and you wonder again how anyone could look at him and _not_ think he's beautiful. "It's not just—a passing fancy, y'know. It's a. Something I've dreamt about since I was old enough to dream." Lance tilts his head back and looks up, and you follow his gaze, see the moon, shining big and full, and bright. "My dream, and you pissed all over it like a dog marking its fucking territory."

You wince, because, colorful metaphor aside, that's pretty much exactly what you did. "I was…am…was…jealous. Scared. I don't—can't lose you. Couldn't lose you," you finish lamely, because that's exactly what you did; you got scared, got snarky, got nasty, and watched him walk away. He couldn't walk out of your life; you were too joined for that, because of the group. He wouldn't walk away from Nsync, but he walked away from you.

You sit down beside him, close enough to feel his body heat, but far enough you don't touch him. He smells faintly citrusy, and oddly, like sunshine.

"So which is it?" He asks softly, after the silence grows thick and heavy again.

"Huh?"

"Are you, or were you, jealous? Scared. Whatever." He has his arms looped around his knees, hands clasped loosely, and you want to reach out, touch him, take his hand.

"I—don't know." Joey and JC didn't cover that with you, and you hadn't ever thought about it, really. "Still am, I guess. Scared, definitely. Jealous…a little bit, I guess. I don't…I don't understand."

"It's not really for you to understand." Lance looks at you then, head tilted a little, enough for you to see his face, painted pale and beautiful by cool, soft light. "Support, yeah. I mean—I'd love your support, y'know? And I'd like you to understand that…it's something I need…want to do. Like you wanted…needed…to take care of your mom and your sisters?"

You frown. "That's not really the same thing, dude."

"Sure it is. It's a different dream, but it's the same basis. Don't tell me you never dreamed of being able to give them everything they needed or wanted. Look me in the eye, Chris, and tell me that your biggest dream growing up wasn't taking care of your family."

"You can't compare taking care of my family to wanting to go into space."

Lance hits the sand with one fist. "Dammit! Would you listen to me? A dream is a dream is a fucking _dream_, okay? It doesn't matter what the dream is—just that you _had_ one. Something you wanted more than anything. Something you would've sold your soul to have. That's what space is for me. It's something I've wanted since I knew I could want—and maybe attain. I love singing and dancing, and touring, but since I was tiny, I've sat just like this," he gestures to the two of you, small and insignificant on the beach, under a huge, endless canopy, "and I've looked up, and I've dreamed about touching them. Seeing them up close. Seeing the light, and knowing I was doing something special. Different." He draws his knees up closer against his chest. "I only needed you to understand that…and give me a little—just a little. It was never about you, Chris, but you made it about you."

You're still not sure he's using the right analogies. Your dream never involved potential death, or at the very least, physical injury, or leaving the country…the _planet_…but you understand – you think – what he's saying. And it makes you hurt all over again, that you shot him down when all he needed was someone to listen to him, support him; when you could've fallen to pieces quietly, away from where he would hear or see. You wonder if it's too late. You can offer the support, still scared shitless that he might go, will go, but is it too little, too late?

You don't even need to be his lover again, though you ache with wanting that; you'd settle for being friends. To be able to talk and bullshit without this big, empty, yawning chasm opening up between you.

"I kinda suck," you say quietly, offering up the proverbial olive branch. "A lot." He snorts softly. "A really lot," you add. He snorts again.

"You suck in a major way, yes." Lance looks at you again, eyes hooded, shielded so you can't see them. "But I've known you too long, Kirkpatrick. Sucking majorly isn't anything new. You'd think I'd be used to it, by now."

"You'd think." You don't know what else to say, now. You feel kind of numb, maybe a little cold, in spite of the warm air all around you. You turn toward him, just a little, wondering if you'd sound like an even bigger ass than you feel, if you asked if you could be friends again. He turns at the same time, one hand already moving to cup the back of your head, to hold you so he can kiss you.

"You're an ass," he whispers against your mouth, "but I love you." Lance kisses you again, telling you things silently that words could never say. His tongue paints pictures inside your mouth, slick and wet, and you shift awkwardly to pull him closer, drinking in the taste of him, the way his mouth feels against yours, relearning the sweetness of shared breath, and swallowed moans, and that low, whispery rumble he makes when he's happy and aroused.

The sand is cool against your back when Lance presses you down onto it, but he's solid heat on top of you, and you don't care. His thigh between yours is heavy, thick, pressing just so against you until you want to scream with frustration at the teasing that's almost, but not quite, enough. Instead you moan, and pull him closer, shifting so you can wrap at least one leg up around his and rock up against him. A tiny part of your brain screams, _this is really, really stupid! You're out in public. Anyone could come by and see you._

You don't care. You've missed him so much. So bad.

You really don't care when Lance slides down your body and tugs your pants open; when he takes your cock in his mouth your brain shorts out. If you have any thoughts after that, they're lost in a swirl of heat, and color, in the soft sounds of the ocean lapping at the beach, mixed with the quiet sounds of Lance sucking and licking, and finally, in your own moans when you come.

You go down on him when you can move again. You feel nicely buzzed, body humming with energy, skin tingling with pleasure. He makes those sounds, low in his throat, a muted rasp that rises and falls rhythmically as you suck and swallow, fingers stroking the insides of his thighs. When he comes, it's quietly, the fingers of one hand tightening in your hair, the other hand thumping against the sand before he falls back, sighing softly. You lick your lips and hum, enjoying the lingering taste there. You can taste yourself on his mouth when you kiss him, fingers tangling into his hair.

"I'm still scared," you whisper endless minutes, hours, later, the two of you on your backs, fingers twined, staring up at the night sky.

"Me too," he says softly. "But—we can be scared together, right?"

You think about that, nod once, though you doubt he sees it. His eyes are still focused on the dots of light, on the blackness, like he's feeling it, like he's already a part of it. Maybe he is. It's always night in space, no matter what the clock says. Lance feels that. Hopefully, you can, too. You squeeze his hand.

"Yeah, we can. Together."

~fin~


End file.
